In today's laboratory environments optical measurements play an important role. For example, fluorescence measurements can be used to qualitatively or quantitatively analyze a biological sample. In the course of this process, fluorescent light re-emitted from a particular target contained in the biological sample is collected and the sample can be characterized based on the detected fluorescent light. Sample volumes used in these processes can be fairly small. For instance, in analyzers for characterizing samples containing nucleotides multiplied by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), sample volumes of only a few microliters or less are not uncommon. As a consequence, a number of fluorescent molecules or entities contained in a particular sample can be fairly low. This, in turn, can result in fairly low fluorescent light intensities of the re-emitted light and correspondingly low signal intensities of optical measurement devices in PCR analyzers.
In this situation, one strategy can be to increase the integration time of the optical sampling process to account for the low signal intensities. However, analyzer time is a valuable good so that simply extending the integration time of the measurement system might not be a viable or desirable option in many situations. Moreover, simply increasing the sampling time might also cause other issues, e.g., due to noise or sample degradation.